92 years of age and almost 43 in power as Cameroon’s president; I’d admire his stamina if I thought he’d left his Swiss hotel room for more than a week to campaign for his recent reelection. As it was, putting his name – Paul Biya – on the ballot guaranteed his success, and looking into what it stands for, I found little to admire.
While the last few years have primed me to distrust protestors who decry election fraud, I can’t fault the Cameroonian youth’s intuition that something is suspect about Biya’s win. From banning activity by his opposition party (Tchiroma’s Cameroon National Salvation Front) in the Far North – an area frequently victim to Boko Haram attacks and, therefore, an influential swing vote – to prohibiting the media discussing his ripe old age and probable ill-health, he sure knows how to keep a country tied down. When so little information makes it into the headlines, it’s only sensible for protestors to latch onto what we do know: the opposition did not have a free platform in this election.
These protestors are the fed-up youth; born and raised under Biya’s poor governance. In a more bizarre stage of the campaigns, this included 27-year-old Brenda Biya, the First Daughter, who posted a heartbreaking TikTok pleading for her countrymen to vote against him. Whether those on the streets in Duala or Brenda in Switzerland, these resistors have been quickly repressed – ending, respectively, in brutal shootings and coerced apologies. The age dynamic here is potent; while the President is simply rather old by British standards, he has outlasted the average Cameroonian citizen by 30 years.
Life expectancy does not stay so low accidentally, it is the direct consequence of Biya’s mismanaged governance – caused by the very corruption that has funded his longevity. Decreasing complexity of exports plus increasing civil fighting equals economic stagnation. Biya’s failure to address this, coupled with his wanton financial fraud, has made Cameroonians suffer in poverty and ill-health. All the while he flies off to a hotel in Switzerland – racking up a $65m (£49.4m) bill – with round-the-clock access to healthcare providers.
Despite all the above, or perhaps because of it, he continues to win elections. The trouble is, I’m not all that surprised. The flipside of most people being born under his governance is that they will instinctively conflate Cameroonian national identity with his rule. Biya losing an election would be like the Queen’s death – shocking, even if expected, and destabilising to the ordinary citizen’s conception of their country. As the second decolonial leader, rising unelected to power by right-hand-manning the first, he is the product of a bygone era of one-party elections. Such is his badge of honour, and the ego-trip behind his disregard for electoral freedom.
Giving this dictator his last few years might not seem all that significant – it’s only a fraction of the 43 previous ones, after all. That is, unless you count as meaningful the lives that will be lost by more years of mismanaging the economy, health-system, and brewing conflicts; because then it seems rather devastating that there will, again, be no change. So, let’s cling to the hope: in the youth protests, the opposition’s relative electoral success, growing discomfort with Biya’s cult of personality, and, most importantly, in the general reckoning that the country cannot exist around one man. The youth are demanding a better system and ready to actualise it, just as soon as Daddy Biya pops his clogs.
“Visit of Paul Biya, President of Cameroon, to the CEC” by European Communities is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
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Daddy Biya, the World’s Oldest Dictator: How Long Will Cameroon’s Absent Father Reign?
92 years of age and almost 43 in power as Cameroon’s president; I’d admire his stamina if I thought he’d left his Swiss hotel room for more than a week to campaign for his recent reelection. As it was, putting his name – Paul Biya – on the ballot guaranteed his success, and looking into what it stands for, I found little to admire.
While the last few years have primed me to distrust protestors who decry election fraud, I can’t fault the Cameroonian youth’s intuition that something is suspect about Biya’s win. From banning activity by his opposition party (Tchiroma’s Cameroon National Salvation Front) in the Far North – an area frequently victim to Boko Haram attacks and, therefore, an influential swing vote – to prohibiting the media discussing his ripe old age and probable ill-health, he sure knows how to keep a country tied down. When so little information makes it into the headlines, it’s only sensible for protestors to latch onto what we do know: the opposition did not have a free platform in this election.
These protestors are the fed-up youth; born and raised under Biya’s poor governance. In a more bizarre stage of the campaigns, this included 27-year-old Brenda Biya, the First Daughter, who posted a heartbreaking TikTok pleading for her countrymen to vote against him. Whether those on the streets in Duala or Brenda in Switzerland, these resistors have been quickly repressed – ending, respectively, in brutal shootings and coerced apologies. The age dynamic here is potent; while the President is simply rather old by British standards, he has outlasted the average Cameroonian citizen by 30 years.
Life expectancy does not stay so low accidentally, it is the direct consequence of Biya’s mismanaged governance – caused by the very corruption that has funded his longevity. Decreasing complexity of exports plus increasing civil fighting equals economic stagnation. Biya’s failure to address this, coupled with his wanton financial fraud, has made Cameroonians suffer in poverty and ill-health. All the while he flies off to a hotel in Switzerland – racking up a $65m (£49.4m) bill – with round-the-clock access to healthcare providers.
Despite all the above, or perhaps because of it, he continues to win elections. The trouble is, I’m not all that surprised. The flipside of most people being born under his governance is that they will instinctively conflate Cameroonian national identity with his rule. Biya losing an election would be like the Queen’s death – shocking, even if expected, and destabilising to the ordinary citizen’s conception of their country. As the second decolonial leader, rising unelected to power by right-hand-manning the first, he is the product of a bygone era of one-party elections. Such is his badge of honour, and the ego-trip behind his disregard for electoral freedom.
Giving this dictator his last few years might not seem all that significant – it’s only a fraction of the 43 previous ones, after all. That is, unless you count as meaningful the lives that will be lost by more years of mismanaging the economy, health-system, and brewing conflicts; because then it seems rather devastating that there will, again, be no change. So, let’s cling to the hope: in the youth protests, the opposition’s relative electoral success, growing discomfort with Biya’s cult of personality, and, most importantly, in the general reckoning that the country cannot exist around one man. The youth are demanding a better system and ready to actualise it, just as soon as Daddy Biya pops his clogs.
“Visit of Paul Biya, President of Cameroon, to the CEC” by European Communities is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
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